Two days later, sick of the silence and being ignored, Naruto fell into step beside Sasuke. He still didn't like the bastard and wouldn't hesitate to punch him if given the excuse, but that didn't mean he had to express his dislike at every corner. Sasuke's bastard-ness was hereditary so he couldn't really blame the guy. The first time Naruto had met him he'd been unconscious. He'd thought that Sasuke was a corpse that Kakashi-sensei had put into his tent as a twisted revenge plan for something. When the corpse moved, he'd been scared almost as badly as he was whenever his mom got angry.
"Are you gonna tell me why you're here yet or do I need to wait a couple more days?" Naruto asked. Kakashi-sensei and Obito and Sakura were acting so unnatural that it made him uncomfortable to even talk to them, all because Sasuke was an Uchiha and they didn't want to restart the Clan Wars by accidentally making fun of his shoes. It would be so much easier to just ask him if he was with them for some super important mission to make Obito suffer for leaving the clan of his own accord. Obito was the one who always preached talking, but here he was being an absolute fucking coward.
"Obito kidnapped me, for one," Sasuke said, not even glancing at him. Naruto really did not want to know what had gone down when Obito and Sasuke had first met, so he altered his question.
"Okay, but why'd you stay? You don't like me and you don't talk to Sakura. Obito apparently kidnapped you and Kakashi's personality is basically you except less… shadow-y. You don't like ramen which is all we eat. You keep—"
"I don't have many other options. Regardless, if you don't want me here that badly I can just leave."
"I didn't say that." The last thing Naruto wanted was to make someone else feel unwanted. "Just go back to your clan if you don't have anywhere else to go."
"I can't," Sasuke replied, gaze dropping to the floor instead of straight ahead. "I was. Hn. Dismissed of my status as an Uchiha. Technically."
"Wait." Naruto paused, allowing this to digest. "Wait, wait, hold up. You mean you were kicked out?"
"Technically."
"Wha—why?! Are you mentally unstable?! Fucking shit, you are! Are you actually going to kill us?! I can't believe Sakura was ri—!"
"Shut up!" Sasuke hissed, turning sharply to glare at him with the intensity of a hundred katon. "I'm not mentally unstable! I'm just—bad at… being a shinobi. Stop saying I'm going to kill you."
Naruto stared. He had no idea what else to do. He couldn't believe that Sasuke had been kicked out of his clan because he was a bad shinobi, not after what Sakura had told him. There was just no way. He had to have some other motive and that was just a really, really bad cover story. But Sasuke also looked like he'd just gotten kicked a couple times and Naruto's intuition told him that Sasuke wasn't lying. If Naruto had terrible ninja skills at everything else then the one thing he was good at was reading people.
"Damn you," Naruto muttered, once again focusing on the trail. They hadn't been that loud and they were a good distance behind the others, so he doubted they'd heard. "Now you're making me feel bad." It must've been a recent thing, Sasuke getting kicked out. Otherwise he would've already gotten a message from his dad to be on the lookout for any rogue Uchiha with his own agenda to follow. At least there were no kekkei genkai hunters out looking for Sasuke specifically.
Yet.
Shut up.
"Put on some kind of pity act and I'll burn off your eyebrows."
At least Sasuke made himself very, very easy to hate.
They arrived in a town situated in a mountain pass the next day. There was an inn, which was a pleasant surprise for a small, out-of-the-way place like this. Naruto was sitting on a chair in the lobby, arms crossed and having what he thought was a staring contest with Sasuke who was standing across the room. Kakashi-sensei and Sakura were in charge of making a list of all the supplies they needed to restock. Obito was counting up their combined money at the front desk, ignoring the ill-tempered receptionist with enthusiasm.
"We can either get a couple rooms to sleep and shower or we can get food and supplies, but we don't have enough money for both."
Naruto blinked, completely forgetting about the staring contest for a moment. Usually they were completely broke no matter where they stopped and would need to take at least three small, local missions for money. The only person who could possibly have money out of them was Sasuke. Of course he was rich, why wouldn't he be? With a quick glance Naruto found that Kakashi-sensei and Sakura were staring at Sasuke too.
"What?" he asked, almost immediately uncomfortable with attention. His narrowed eyes flicked from person to person, eventually settling on Kakashi-sensei.
The masked shinobi hummed. "You just have a lot of money."
Sasuke seemed to think this over. After a few seconds he scoffed and muttered, "Not anymore." Naruto would never admit to laughing.
·
Sakura demanded they take the rooms and buy supplies later. Naruto appreciated taking a warm shower with real soap and the miracle known as shampoo after weeks on the road.
He split up from the others to scout for any ramen shops before searching for a mission. Most civilians would jump at a shinobi who offered their services. It was usually less expensive and far less time consuming then sending a messenger to any of the clans. Bookstores almost always had something that needed to get done, whether it was a delivery or a pick-up or cleaning out the basement. Naruto headed over to the one he'd seen near the middle of town, but Kakashi-sensei materialized in front of him before he could get there.
"I thought Sasuke was with you," Kakashi-sensei said, glancing behind them. Sakura and Obito appeared a moment later, but no Sasuke. Naruto was about to get offended and say that his chakra felt ten times better than the prickly bastard when the fucker himself walked out of the bookstore. He had a scroll in his hand, rolling it shut as he walked towards them.
"What's that?" Naruto asked. Sasuke gave him an unimpressed look.
"A scroll."
Naruto was ready to throw down with the bastard right then. Obito put a hand on his shoulder as a warning. He was half-tempted to tell him that Sasuke wasn't part of the Uchiha clan anymore and that beating him up a little wouldn't throw the country into another few decades of bloodshed. No one would try to stop him then.
Instead, he drew on his mature side and took a deep breath. "I want to punch you," he said. Obito was always saying that he should vocalize his problems and look for a solution before acting.
"Fair," Sasuke said without hesitance. "I need to deliver this."
"We found an escort that should only take a few hours," Kakashi-sensei informed.
"I'll go with Kakashi-sensei and Obito!" Sakura blurted quickly. Naruto wanted to argue, but he also wanted to fight Sasuke and was the only one who didn't fear being murdered.
"I'll get you back for this," Naruto warned before following Sasuke's example and flickering away.
They'd barely been running for an hour when they realized they were being followed. They came to a stop near a waterfall, standing back-to-back. Naruto's senses had been clouding over for a while, but only in the last few seconds had it become noticeable. It was as if his head was wrapped in sludge.
Sasuke shifted, probably drawing his sword. "Don't get close to the water," he warned quietly. Naruto felt his skin prickle from the heat of the fireball that went up behind him. Two of their pursuers emerged from the trees in front of him. Naruto barely had time to summon any shadow clones before he was locked in combat. More enemies poured out of the greenery, each one adding another layer of muck over Naruto's senses.
The attackers were vicious, but Naruto was better. Within minutes the six of them were down, sustaining harsh bruises to their stomachs and heads. When he turned around to see if he could assist Sasuke, he was half expecting the burning mess he was greeted with. Sasuke was standing on the river with his back to the waterfall. A semicircle of flames swept up behind the five he was fighting, keeping them trapped or forced to run up the river and into Naruto.
What Naruto did not expect was the massive raiton that Sasuke used. The electricity traveled upstream and wrapped around the attackers, paralyzing them in an instant. Sasuke shouldn't have had enough chakra to pull that off, but instead of collapsing from exhaustion he looked fine and his chakra level remained completely stagnant. With a start Naruto realized that Sasuke must've been suppressing his chakra the whole time he was with them, because his presence as a shinobi was tiny. This created a layer of uneasiness that definitely hadn't been there before.
Sasuke walked backwards to the riverbank with his sword up defensively. Naruto could understand why. Even though the six he'd been fighting were unconscious and four of the five that Sasuke had been fighting were being washed down the waterfall, the murk over his senses still hadn't lifted. He walked towards Sasuke to ask why the fuck there were so many bandits after a tiny scroll from a bookstore.
"That was fun."
Naruto almost, almost screamed. The last bandit on the river fucking molted, like he was hatching out of his skin. Naruto lifted his hands to summon a few more clones. Suddenly, he couldn't see. His mouth and nose were blocked by slime. He couldn't breathe or think or see, and then he was numb. He felt his chakra get yanked into his hand, didn't know how or why, but then he couldn't feel anything. In the next moment he could breathe and see again, but there was no relief because he was falling down the waterfall, and then he was unconscious.
